Menstrual Blood

From Barbara Walker's Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

From the earliest human cultures, the mysterious magic of creation was thought to reside in theblood women gave forth in apparent harmony with the moon, and which was occasionally retainedin the womb to 'coagulate' into a baby. Men regarded this blood with holy dread, as the life essence,inexplicably shed without pain, wholly foreign to male experience.

Most words for menstruation also meant such things as incomprehensible, supernatural, sacred,spirit, deity. Like the Latin sacred, old Arabian words for 'pure' and 'impure' both applied tomenstrual blood and to that only. The Maoris stated explicitly that human souls are made ofmenstrual blood, which when retained in the womb 'assumes human form and grows into a man.'Africans said menstrual blood is 'congealed to fashion a man'. Aristotle said the same: human life ismade of 'coagulum' of menstrual blood. Pliny called menstrual blood the 'material substance ofgeneration', capable of forming 'a curd, which afterwards in process of time quickeneth and growethto the form of a body.' This primitive notion of the prenatal function of menstrual blood was stilltaught in European medical schools up to the 18th century.

Basic ideas about menstrual blood came from the Hindu theory that as the Great Mother creates, hersubstances become thickened and forms a curd or clot; solid matter is produced as a 'crust'. Thiswas the way she gave birth to the cosmos, and women employ the same method on a smaller scale.According to Daustinius, 'the fruit in the womb is nourished by the mother's blood....Themenstruum does not fail the fruit for nourishment, till it at the proper time comes to the light of theday.'

Indians of South America said all mankind was made of 'moon blood' in the beginning. The sameidea prevailed in ancient Mesopotamia, where the Great Goddess Ninhursag made mankind out ofclay and infused with her "blood of life." Under her alternate name of Mammetun or Aruru theGreat, the Potter, she taught women to form clay dolls and smear them with menstrual blood as aconception- charm, a piece of magic that underlay the name of Adam, from the feminine adamah,meaning "bloody clay," though scholars more delicately translated it "red earth."

The Bible's story of Adam was lifted from an older female-oriented creation myth recounting thecreation of man from clay and moonblood. So was the Koran's creation story, which said Allah"made man out of flowing blood"; but in pre-Islamic Arabia, Allah was the Goddess of creation, Al-Lat. The Romans also had traces of the original creation myth. Plutarch said man was made ofearth, but the power that made a human body grow was the moon, source of menstrual blood.

The lives of the very gods were dependent on the miraculous power of menstrual blood. In Greece itwas euphemistically called the "supernatural red wine" given to the gods by Mother Hera in hervirgin form, as Hebe. The root myths of Hinduism reveal the nature of this 'wine'. At one time allgods recognized the supremacy of the Great Mother, manifesting herself as the spirit of creation(Kali-Maya). She 'invited them to bath in the bloody flow of her womb and to drink of it; and thegods, in holy communion, drank of the fountain of life -- (hic est sanguis meus!) -- and bathed init, and rose blessed to the heavens'. To this day, clothes allegedly stained with the GOddess'smenstrual blood are greatly prized as healing charms. W.R. Smith reported that the value of the gumacacia as an amulet "is connected to the idea that it is menstruous blood, i.e., that the tree is awoman." For religious ceremonies, Australian aborigines painted their sacred stones, churingas, andthemselves with red orche, declaring that it was really women's menstrual blood.The esoteric secret of the gods was that their mystical powers of longevity, authority, and creativitycame from the same female essence. The Norse god Thor for example reached the magic land ofenlightenment and eternal life by bathing in a river filled with the menstrual blood of 'giantesses' --that is of the Primal Matriarchs, "Powerful Ones" who governed the elder gods before Odin broughthis 'Asians' (Aesir) out of the East. Odin acquired supremacy by stealing and drinking the 'wiseblood' from the triple cauldron in the womb of the Mother-Earth, the same Triple Goddess known asKali-Maya in the southeast Asia.

Odin's theft of menstrual magic paralleled that of Indra, who stole the ambrosia of immortality inthe same way. Indian myth called the sacred fluid Soma -- in Greek, "the body", because the word'seastern root referred to a mystical substance of the body. Soma was the object of so much holydread that its interpretations were many.

Soma was produced by the churning of the primal sea (Kali's 'ocean of blood' or sometimes 'sea ofmilk'). Or Soma was secreted by the Moon-Cow. Or Soma was carried in the 'white pot' (belly) ofMohini the Enchantress. Or the source of Soma was the moon. Or from Soma all the gods wereborn. Or Soma was the secret name of the Mother Goddess and the active part of the 'soul of theworld'.

Soma was drunk by priests at sacrificial ceremonies and mixed with milk as a healing charm;therefore it was not milk. Soma was especially revered on Somvara, Monday, the day of the moon.In an ancient ceremony called Soma-vati, women of Maharastra circumambulated the sacredfemale-symbolic fig tree whenever the new moon fell on a Monday.

Some myths claimed the Goddess under her name of Lakshmi, "Fortune" or "Sovereignty", gaveSoma to Indra to make him king of the gods. His wisdom, power, and curiously feminine capacityfor pregnancy, came from Lakshmi's mystic drink, 'of which none tastes who dwells on earth.' Ondrinking it straight from the Goddess, Indra became like her, the Mount of Paradise with its fourrivers, "many-hued" like the Goddess's rainbow veils, rich in cattle and fruiting vegetation. TheGoddess's blood became his wisdom. Similarly, Greeks believed the wisdom of men or god wascentered in his blood, the soul-stuff given by his mother.

Egyptian pharaohs became divine by ingesting 'the blood of Isis,' a soma-like ambrosia called sa. Itshieroglyphic sign was the same as the sign of the vulva, a yonic loop like the one on the ankh orCross of Life. Painted red, this loop signified the female genital and the Gate of Heaven. Amuletsburied with the dead specifically prayed Isis to deify the deceased with her magic blood. A specialamulet called the Tjet represented Isis's vulva and was formed of red substance - jasper, carnelian,red porcelain, red glass, or red wood. This amulet was said to carry the redeeming power of theblood of Isis.

The same elixir of immortality received the name of amrita in Persia. Sometimes it was called theMilk of the Mother Goddess, sometimes a fermented drink, sometimes sacred blood. Always it wasassociated with the moon. "Dew and rain becoming vegetable sap, sap becoming the milk of thecow, and the milk then becoming converted into blood; -- Amrita, water, sap, milk, and bloodrepresent but differing states of the one elixir. The vessel or cup of this immortal fluid is the moon."Celtic kings became gods by drinking the 'red mead' dispensed by the Fairy Queen, Mab, whosename was formerly Medhbh or "mead." Thus she gave a drink of herself. Lakshmi. A Celtic nameof this fluid was dergflaith, meaning either "red ale" or "red sovereignty." In Celtic Britain, to bestained with red meant to be chosen by the Goddess as king. Celtic ruadh meant both "red" and"royal."

The same blood color implied apotheosis after death. The pagan paradise or Fairyland was at theuterine center of the earth, site of the magic Fountain of Life. An old manuscript in the BritishMuseum said the dying -and -resurrected Phoenix lives there forever. The central Holy Mountain ormons veneris contains both male and female symbols: the Tree of Life and the Fountain of EternalYouth, the latter obviously menstrual, as it was said to overflow once every lunar month.

Medieval churchmen insisted that the communion wine drunk by witches was menstrual blood, andthey may have been right. The famous wizard Thomas Rhymer joined a witch cult under thetutelage of the Fairy Queen, who told him she had "a bottle of claret wine here in her lap," andinvited him to lay his head in her lap. Claret was the traditional drink of the kings and also asynonym for blood; its name literally meant 'enlightenment.' There was a saying, "the man in themoon drinks claret," connected with the idea that the wine represented lunar blood.

Medieval romance and the courtly-love movement, later related to the witch cults, were stronglyinfluenced by the Tantric tradition, in which menstrual blood was indeed the wine of poets andsages. It is still specified in the Left Hand Rite of Tantra that the priestess impersonating thegoddess must be menstruating, and after contact with her a man may perform rites that will makehim "a great poet, a Lord of the World" who travels on elephant-back like a rajah.

In ancient societies both east and west, menstrual blood carried the spirit of sovereign authoritybecause it was the medium of transmission of the life of clan or tribe. Among the Ashanti, girlchildren are still more prized than boys because a girl is the carrier of "blood" (mogya). The conceptis also clearly defined in India, where menstrual blood is known as the Kula flower or Kula nectar,which has an intimate connection with the life of the family. When a girl first menstruates she issaid to have 'borne the flower'. The corresponding English word flower has the significant literalmeaning of 'that which flows'.

The Bible also calls menstrual blood the flower (Leviticus 15:24), precursor of the fruit of thewomb (a child). As any flower mysteriously contained its future fruit, so uterine blood was themoon-flower supposed to contain the soul of future generations. This was a central idea in thematrilineal concept of the clan.

The Chinese religion of Tao, "the Way", taught Tantric doctrines later supplanted by patriarchial-ascetic Confucianism. Taoists said a man could become immortal (or at least long-lived) byabsorbing menstrual blood, called red yin juice, from a woman's Mysterious Gateway, otherwiseknown as the Grotto of the White Tiger, symbol of life-giving female energy. Chinese sages calledthis red juice the essence of Mother Earth, the yin principal that gives life to all things. Theyclaimed the Yellow Emperor became a god by absorbing the yin juice of twelve hundred women.

A Chinese myth said the Moon-goddess Chang-O, who controlled menstruation, was offended bymale jealousy of her powers. She left her husband, who quarreled with her because she had all theelixir of immortality, and he had none, and was resentful. She turned her back on him and went tolive in the moon forever, in much the same way Lilith left Adam to live at the 'Red Sea'. Chang-Oforbade men to attend Chinese moon festivals, which were afterward celebrated by women only, atthe full moon of the autumnal equinox.

The Hebrew word for blood, dam, means 'mother' or 'woman' in other Indo-European languages(e,g. dam, damsel, madam, la dama, dame) and also "the curse" (damn). The Sumaeriean GreatMother represented maternal blood and bore names like Dam-kina, Damgalnunna. From her bellyflowed the four rivrres of Paradise, sometimes called rivers of blood which is the 'life' of all flesh.Her firstborn child, the savior, was Damu, a 'child of the blood." Damos or 'mother-blood" was theword for "the people' in matriarchal Mycenae. Another common ancient symbol of the blood-riverof life was the red carpet, traditionally trod by scared kings, heros, and brides.

Taoist China considered red a scared color associated with women, blood, sexual potency, andcreative power. White was the color of men, semen, negitive influences, passivity, and death. Thiswas the basic Tantric Idea of male and female essences: the male principal is seen as 'passive' and'quiescent'; the female principal as 'active' and 'creative', the reverse of later patriarchal views.

Female blood color alone was often considered a potent magic charm. The Maori renderedanything sacred by coloring it red, and calling the red color menstrual blood. Andaman Islandersthought blood-red paint a powerful medicine, and painted sick people red all over in an effort tocurethem. Hottentots addressed their Mother Goddess as one "who has painted thy body red"; shewas divine because she never dropped or wasted menstrual blood. Some African tribes believedthat menstrual blood alone, kept in a covered pot for none months, had the power to turn itself into ababy.

Easter eggs, classic womb-symbols of the Goddess Eostre, Were traditionally colored red and laidon graves to strengthen the dead. This habit, common in Greece and southern Russia, might betraced all the way back to Paleolithic graves and funeral furnishing reddened with ochre, for acloser resemblance to the Earth Mother’s womb from which the dead could be "born again."Ancient tombs everywhere have shown the bones of the dead covered with red ochre. Sometimeseverything in the tomb, including the walls, had the red color. J.D. Evans described a well tombonMalta filled reddened bones, which struck fear into the workmen who insisted the bones werecovered with "fresh blood."

A born-again ceremony from Australia showed that the Aborgines linked rebirth with the blood ofthe womb. The chant performed at Ankota, the "vulva of the earth," emphasized the rednesssurrounding the worshipper: "A straight track is gaping open before me. An underground hollow isgaping before me. A cavernous pathway is gaping before me. An underground pathway is gapingbefore me. Red I am like the heart of a flame of fire. Red, too, is the hollow in which I amresting." Images like these help explain why some of the oldest mages of the goddess, likeKurukulla in the east and her counterpart Cybele in the west, were associated with both caverns andredness.

Greek mystics were "born again" out of the river Styx, otherwise known as Alpha, "the Beginning."This river wound seven times through the earth’s interior and emerged at a yonic shrine near thecity of Clitor (Greek kleitoris) sacred to the Great Mother. Styx was the blood-stream from theearth’s vagina; its waters were credited with the same dread powers as menstrual blood. Olympiangods swore their absolutely binding oaths by the waters of Styx, as men on earth swore by the bloodof their mothers. Symbolic death and rebirth were linked with baptism in the waters of Styx, as inmany other sacred rivers the world over. Jesus himself was baptized in Palestine’s version of theStyx, the river Jordan. When a man bathed seven times in this river, "his flesh came again like untothe flesh of a little child" (2 Kings 5:14). In Greek tradition the journey to the land of death meantcrossing the Styx; in Judeo-Christian tradition it was crossing the Jordan. The was the same "riverof blood: crossed by Thomas Rhymer on his way to Fairyland.

Tantric worship of menstrual blood penetrated the Greco-Roman world before the Christian era andwas well established in the Gnostic period. This worship provided the agape -"love-feast" or"spiritual marriage" -practiced by Gnostic Christians like the Ophites. Another name for the agapewas synesaktism, "the Way of Shaktism," meaning Tantric yoni-worship.52 Synesaktism wasdeclared a heresy before the 7th century A.D.53 Subsequently the "love-feast" disappeared, andwomen were forbidden direct participation in Christian worship, according to St. Paul’s rule (1Timothy 2:11-12).

Epiphanius described the agape practiced by Ophite Christians, while making it clear that theseheretical sexual activities filled him with horror:

"Their women they share in common; and when anyone arrives who might be alien to theirdoctrine, the men and women have a sign by which they make themselves known to each other.When they extend their hands, apparently in greeting, they tickle the other’s palm in a certain wayand so discover whether the new arrival belongs to their cult. …Husbands separate from theirwives, and a man will say to his own spouse, "Arise and celebrate the love feast (agape) with thybrother." And the wretches mingle with each other…after they have consorted together in apassionate debauch…The woman and the man take the man’s ejaculation into their hands, standup…offering to the Father, the Primal Being of All Nature, what is on their hands, with the words,"We bring to Thee this oblation, which is the very Body of Christ." …They consume it, take houselof their shame and say: "This is the Body of Christ, the Paschal Sacrifice through which our bodiessuffer and are forced to confess to the sufferings of Christ." And when the woman is in her period,they do likewise with her menstruation. The unclean flow of blood, which they garner, they take upin the same way and eat together. And that, they say, is Christ’s Blood. For when they read inRevelation, "I saw the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month" (Rev.22:2), they interpret this as an allusion to the monthly incidence of the female period."

The meaning of this Ophite sacrament to its practitioners is easily recovered from Tantric parallels.Eating the living substances of reproduction was considered more "spiritual" than eating the deadbody of the god, even in the transmuted form of bread and wine, though the color symbolism wasthe same:

When the semen, made molten by the fire of great passion, falls into the lotus of the “mother” andmixes with her red element, he achieves “ the conventional mandala of the thought ofenlightenment.” The resultant mixture is tasted by the united “father-mother” (Yab-Yum), and whenit reaches the throat they can generate concretely a special bliss…the bodichitta-the drop resultingfrom union of semen and menstrual blood-is transferred to the yogi…This empowers hiscorresponding mystic veins and centers to accomplish the Buddha’s function of speech. The term“secret initiation” comes from the tasting of the secret substance. 55

In the occult language of the Tantras, two ingredients of the Great Rite were sukra, semen, andrakta, menstrual blood. The officiating priestess had to be menstruous so her lunar energies were atflood tide.56 She embodied the power of rakta, sometimes rendered rukh or ruq, cognate with theHebrew ruach, “spirit,” and the Arabic ruh, which meant both “spirit” and “red color.” Throughoutall Tantric and related faiths, the merging of female red and male white was “a profoundlyimportant symbolic conjunction.”57

The Sufis, who practiced their own brand of Tantrism, said ruh was female and red. Its malecounterpart sirr, “consciousness,” was white. Red and white colors alternated in the Sufi halka ormagic circle, corresponding to the Tantric chakra and called “the basic unit and very heart of activeSufism.” The Arab rosary of alternating red and white beads had the same meaning: men andwomen coupled around the circle, as in most European folk dances.58

Red and white were the colors worn by alternating female-and-male dancers in the witches’ “fairyring” of pagan Ireland, where the Goddess was worshipped under the same name as the Tantricearth mother, Tara.59 With men and women alternating as in a Tantric chakra, the dance movedcounterclockwise or moonwise, as nearly all circle dances still do. Red and white colors“represented the fairy world.”60

The rites were often governed by old women, due to the ancient belief that post-menopausal womenwere the wisest of mortals because the permanently retained their “wise blood.” In the 17th centuryA.D. Christian writers still insisted that old women were filled with magic power because theirmenstrual blood remained in their veins.61 This was the real reason why old women wereconstantly persecuted for witchcraft. The same “magic blood” that made them leaders in theancient clan system made them objects of fear under the new patriarchal faith.

Because menstrual blood occupied a central position in matriarchal theologies, and was alreadysacer-holy-dreadful-patriarchal-ascetic thinkers showed almost hysterical fear of it. The Laws ofManu said if a man even approached a menstruating woman he would lose his wisdom, energy,sight, strength, and vitality. The Talmud said that if a menstruating woman walked between twomen, one of the men would surely die.62 Brahmans ruled that a man who lay with a menstruatingwoman must suffer a punishment one-quarter as severe as the punishment for Brahmanicide, whichwas the worst crime a Brahman could imagine. Vedic myths were designed to support the law, suchas the myth that Vishnu dared copulate with the Goddess Earth while she was menstruating, whichcaused her to give birth to monsters who nearly destroyed the world.63

This was patriarchal propaganda against the Tantric Maharutti (“Great Rite”), in which menstrualblood was the essential ingredient. In Kali’s cave-temple, her image spouted the blood of sacrificesfrom its vaginal orifice to bathe Shiva’s holy phallus while the two deities formed the lingam-yoni,and worshippers followed suit, in an orgy designed to support the cosmic life-force generated byunion of male and female, white and red.64 In this Great Rite, Shiva became the Anointed One, aswere his many Middle-Eastern counterparts. The Greek translation of Anointed One was Christos.

Persian patriarchs followed the Brahman lead in maintaining that menstruous women must beavoided like poison. They belonged to the devil; they were forbidden to look at the sun, to sit inwater, to speak to a man, or to behold an altar fire.65 The glance of a menstruous woman wasfeared like the glance of the Gorgon. Zoroastrians held that any man who lay with a menstruatingwoman would beget a demon, and would be punished in hell by having filth poured into hismouth.66

Persian religion incorporated the common primitive belief that the first onset of menses must becaused by copulation with a supernatural snake. People not yet aware of fatherhood have supposedthe same snake renders each woman fertile and helps her conceive children.67 Some such beliefprevailed in Minoan Crete, where women and snakes were sacred but men were not. Tube-shapedCretan vessels for pouring oblations represented a vagina, with a serpent crawling inside.68Ancient languages gave the serpent the same name as Eve, a name meaning “Life”; and the mostancient myths made the primal couple not a Goddess and a God, but a Goddess and a Serpent.69The Goddess’s womb was a garden of paradise in which the serpent lived.

Phrygian Ophiogeneis, “Snake-born People,” said their first male ancestor was the Great Serpentwho dwelt in the garden of paradise.70 Paradise was a name of the Goddess-as-Virgin, identifiedwith Mother Hera (Earth), whose virgin form was Hebe, a Greek spelling of Eve. Virgin Heraparthenogenetically conceived the oracular serpent Python, of the “Womb-temple,” Delphi.71Snakes living in the womb of Mother Earth were supposed to possess all the wisdom, being incontact with the “wise blood” of the world.

One of the secrets shared by the primordial woman and her serpent was the secret of menstruation.Persians claimed menstruation was brought into the world by the first mother, whom they calledJahi the Whore, a Lilith-like defier of the Heavenly Father. She began to menstruate for the firsttime after coupling with Ahriman, the Great Serpent. Afterward, she seduced “the first righteousman,” who had previously lived alone in the garden of paradise with only the divine sacrificial bullfor company. He knew nothing of sex until Jahi taught him.72

The Jews borrowed many details from these Persian myths. Rabbinical tradition said Eve began tomenstruate only after she had copulated with the serpent in Eden, and Adam was ignorant of sexuntil Eve taught him.73 It was widely believed that Eve’s firstborn son Cain was not begotten byAdam but by the serpent.74 Beliefs connecting serpents with pregnancy and menstruation appearedthroughout Europe for many centuries. Up to modern times, German peasants still held that womencould be impregnated by snakes.75

Whether initiated by a serpent or not, menstrual bleeding inspired deadly fear among both Persiansand Jewish patriarchs (Leviticus 15). Rachel successfully stole her father’s teraphim (householdgods) by hiding them under a camel saddle and sitting on it, telling her father she was menstruatingso he dared not approach her (Genesis 31). To this day, orthodox Jews refuse to shake hands with awoman because she might be menstruating. Jews also adopted a rule apparently laid down byHesiod, that a man must never wash in the same water previously used by a woman, lest it mightcontain a trace of menstrual blood.76

There were many similar taboos. The ancient world’s most dreaded poison was the “moon-dew”collected by Thessalian witches, said to be a girl’s first menstrual blood shed during an eclipse ofthe moon.77 Pliny said a menstruous woman’s touch could blast the fruits of the field, sour wine,cloud mirrors, rust iron, and blunt the edges of knives.78 If a menstruous woman so much as laid afinger on a beehive, the bees would fly away and never return.79 If a man lay with a menstruouswoman during an eclipse, he would soon fall sick and die.80

Christians inherited all the ancient patriarchs’ superstitious horrors. St. Jerome wrote: “Nothing isso unclean as a woman in her periods; what she touches she causes to become unclean.” Penitentialregulations laid down in the 7th century by Theodore, Bishop of Canterbury, forbade menstruatingwomen to take communion or even enter a church. At the French Synod of Meaux, menstruouswomen were specifically forbidden to come to church. From the 8th to the 11th centuries, manychurch laws denied menstruating women any access to church buildings. As late as 1684 it was stillordered that women in their “fluxes” must remain outside the church door.81 In 1298 the Synod ofWürzburg commanded men not to approach a menstruating woman.82 The superstition came downto the 20th century, when a Scottish medical text quoted an old rhyme to the effect that menstrualblood could destroy the entire world:

Oh! Menstruating woman, thou’rt a fiend

From which all nature should be closely screened.83

Christian women were commanded to despise the “uncleanness” of their own bodies, as in the Ruleof Anchoresses: “Art thou not formed of foul slime? Art thou not always full of uncleanness?”84Medical authorities of the 16th century were still repeating the old belief that “demons wereproduced from menstrual flux.”85 One of the “demons” born of menstrual blood was the legendarybasilisk with its poisonous glance.86 The legend evidently arose from the classic myth of theGorgon with her serpent-hair and wise blood, petrifying men with her glance. The Gorgon and thered cross of menstrual blood once marked the most potent taboos.87 The very word taboo, fromPolynesian tupua, “sacred, magical,” applied specifically to menstrual blood.88

Just as primitives attributed beneficial powers to menstrual blood along with its fearfulness, somedieval peasants thought it could heal, nourish, and fertilize.89 Some believed a menstruatingwoman could protect a crop by walking around the field, or exposing her genitals in it.90 Peasantwomen carried seed to the fields in rags stained with their menstrual blood: a continuation of thecustom of Eleusinan fertility-priestesses.91 Even doctors thought menstrual blood could cureleprosy, or act as a powerful aphrodisiac. Madame de Montespan used it to encourage the ardor ofher royal lover, Louis XIV.92 Gypsies said a woman could win any man’s love with a potion of herown menstrual blood.93

As the former medium of reincarnation, menstrual blood was sometimes called a remedy for deathitself. In the tale of Childe Roland, the elven-king roused men from the magic sleep of death with a“bright red liquor.”94 Early romances associated this universal heal-all with “the blood of a noblevirgin,” as a wise-woman revealed to Galahad.95 The same belief impelled Louis XI to try to staveoff death by drinking young girls blood.

Victorian superstition taught that a child conceived during a menstrual period would be born with acaul, and would have occult powers.96 Nineteenth-century doctors inherited their predecessors’notions of witchcraft and evil, and so maintained that menstruating women are not healthy;copulation with them could infect a man with urethritis or gonorrhea. Dr. Augustus Gardner saidvenereal diseases were usually communicated from women to men, not vice versa.97 Speaking ofsavages’ menstrual taboos, anthropologists described the women as “out of order,” “suffering frommonthly illness,” or “stricken with the malady common to their sex.”98 A doctor wrote even in thepresent century: “We cannot too emphatically urge the importance of regarding these monthlyreturns as periods of ill health, as days when the ordinary occupations are to be suspended ormodified.”99At the present time just as in the Middle Ages, the Catholic church still considers itself on firmtheological ground by advancing, as an argument against ordination of women, the notion that amenstruating priestess would “pollute” the altar. This would not preclude ordination of post-menopausal women, but different excuses are found for those. The holy “blood of life” used to befeminine and real; now it is masculine and symbolic.